Epic Level: Worse than Role Master ?

[EricNoah]

Except for prepping NPCs to use against 15th-20th level PCs, I have no use for Epic Level rules. I can barely keep the abilities of an 8th level wizard straight.

 

[Akunin]

Note that most of those items are custom items from the user's campaign, not standard items in the Epic rules.

 

[Oni]

I don't think we can fairly make any judgements regarding the Epic level rules with this NPC. Here are a few selected quotes from the link.

"No one would easily understand our "personalized" system so we (Cliff "CJ" Jones and I) converted her to today's D&D rules (and liberally "bent" a few of them -- necessary when converting a character of this power level)."


"While most of the "unfamiliar" material below (including the magic items) was self-generated and specific to my campaign, some of it was taken from those as-yet-unreleased books."


If you read the text regarding this NPC, there are still more indicators that this isn't really any sort of fair indication of whats to come with the Epic rules.

 

[PenguinKing]

Re: epic level garbage

*gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag* *gag*

Looks like somebody can't chew gum and post at the same time.

- Sir Bob.

P.S. Nih!

 

[mmu1]

I am sorry, but this is supposed to be an epic character? Eight pages of magic items and stats? Every time "Epic" role-playing gets brought up, no one talks about anything else besides juvenile crap like this. Guidelines and advice for how to run a game of epic scope I could use, but this is just useless junk. 90% of the people in this hobby have a hard time role-playing a 1st level fighter well (myself included - oh, I do feel I do an ok job, but I have yet to see anyone play a fully-realized, three dimensional human character that's not a carbon copy of the player) - which means that, for most, "epic level play" will be the same exact thing as every other campaign, except the numbers will get bigger, and the phallic symbols - magic swords, I mean - will get ever more massive and more powerful. For Christ's sake, how pathetic it is to want to play a god when hardly any of us can do a decent job of role-playing a 200 year old elf, because the concepts involved are too alien... And please, don't tell me you KNOW you can do a good job of role-playing a deity... Unless something strange is going on on the boards, you are HUMAN which is the only point that needs to be made...

Sorry for the rant, but this sort og thing always drives me up the wall... Epic rules.. Bleh.

 

[PenguinKing]

I'd hate to see what you think of the average "supers" system, then - after all, if a system that even allows for high-powered play as an option is so horrendous, how much worse must a system be where that sort of thing is the baseline?

*thinks you'd be much happier playing "Corporations & Cubicles" - except that it would include rules for playing characters ranked higher than the mailroom boy, which is pure munchkinism*

 

[Wolfspider]

Guidelines and advice for how to run a game of epic scope I could use, but this is just useless junk.

I figure this information will be in the actual book. This character was just an example, a teaser.

 

[mmu1]

I'd hate to see what you think of the average "supers" system, then - after all, if a system that even allows for high-powered play as an option is so horrendous, how much worse must a system be where that sort of thing is the baseline?

*thinks you'd be much happier playing "Corporations & Cubicles" - except that it would include rules for playing characters ranked higher than the mailroom boy, which is pure munchkinism*

I have no problem with superheroes whatsoever... They are usually very well defined in terms of their special abilities, immunities, resistances, etc., and often also very human in terms of their personality - which means they can be role-played effectively.

Most epic-level characters, (of the demi-god variety, anyway... the primary offenders as far as I'm concerned) on the other hand, tend to be much like that absurd thing on the wotc page - 20 levels in several different classes, not a single weak physical ability, mental abilities so high we can't even comprehend what it might be like to be so brilliant/wise/charismatic, a collection of artifacts, preferably ones which have been Wished to remove any disadvantages, or that are arbitrarily powerful (becasue they can be)... Essentially, so powerful that if you run them, in order to have a challenge you have to do one of the several things:

A) Keep saving the universe on a weekly basis from a series of increasingly implausible world-destrying beasts that sit hidden in some far away plane, quietly plotting until it's their week to die - which is patently silly in a low-budget fantasy tv series way B) Adventuring by proxy - you're so powerful that getting personally involved is beneath you (or you're held in check by the powers of other epic characters/deities), so you resort to manipulating mundane events in less obvious ways - thus making the whole "deity" thing pointless, and eliminatiing the need to stat out epic characters C) Through some strange twist of fate you keep on getting either stripped of your powers or forced into situations where they don't work so you can be challenged by lesser enemies.

Lord of the Rings is an epic... Wanting the stats for Sauron so you can pit your characters against him in direct combat is NOT. That's Xena the Human +20 Vorpal Chainsaw, or Star Trek: Universe Saved weekly... Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with playing those kind of games if that's your thing, but there's no need to pretend there's anything more to it.

 

[PenguinKing]

That's Xena the Human +20 Vorpal Chainsaw, or Star Trek: Universe Saved weekly... Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with playing those kind of games if that's your thing, but there's no need to pretend there's anything more to it.

Who's pretending? You seem to be reading more into a character sheet than is necessarily implied.

- Sir Bob.

P.S. Nih!

 

[Troll's Choice]

mmu1 almost sounds bitter. Lighten up, man. If someone wants to roleplay a god-like character, let 'em. Don't get your panties in a bundle.

High-level adventuring is fun.